


Coda for Noldolantë

by Voidflower



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Doom, Gen, SO, and pretty inevitable, character death canon, feanorians being generally doomed, gloom, like major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1510712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voidflower/pseuds/Voidflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing for Maglor, then, is to die, and join the Outer Darkness. And he cannot, not if his brother dies staring into the light.</p>
<p>(Or the days following the War of Wrath and preceding the fall of Maedhros and the ruin of Maglor)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda for Noldolantë

The brothers have been silent for days now, speaking only in implication and the language built up between them over centuries of alliance. Speech is superfluous, and, anyway, the light from the Silmarils shines so bright it eclipses sound, rings in Maglor's ears like a physical presence. The damned thing still burns his hand, but the pain is monotonous, meaningless. Uniformly unbearable. He wonders, not for the first time, what it would take to cast the thing away, or to drive a knife through his heart. But he can't. Not now. Maedhros needs him- his brother, resilient though he may have been, can't very well care for himself with a stump and the burned wreck of his left hand clutching a Silmaril. Too proud... too hopeless, perhaps, to stow it in his pack most of the time, as Maglor does. He takes it out when they stop to eat or to collapse into something like rest, and lets it burn his hand. He deserves it, after all. He stole the pain for himself.

Maedhros looks at him in silent commiseration, eyes glassy, unfocused. Maglor suspects the jewel burns hotter in his brother's hand; though why that should be, Maglor doesn't know. His brother is (was, a voice whispers) easily the most righteous of them all, the wisest and the most kind. For a son of Fëanor, of course.

Perhaps Thangorodrim tears at him still.

They stop at nightfall, far in the north of Beleriand. The cold staves off the heat of the Silmarils, at least a little, but they need to eat. Maglor lights a fire, and they wince as the flames leap up to engulf the dry wood. Maglor turns to see Maedhros's eyes fixed on the fire, staring, mesmerized. Fire licks at his pupils, and something else, deeper, hotter, burns underneath. The Silmaril's steady glow heats to a frantic flickering, pulsing through Maedhros' s gaunt hand like a heart.

Maglor knows then, knows Maedhros will fade away very soon, or he will die. The last of Maglor's brothers, eyes burning with the embers of Fëanor's dying words.  
The only thing for Maglor, then, is to die, and join the Outer Darkness. And he cannot (will not), not if his brother dies staring into the light.

 

***

This is not the day Maedhros dies.

They wander for days, or weeks, or months, and the wrecked country quietly draws aside at their passing, fearful. They see no living thing, but many remnants of the Valar's wrath. Maglor does not need the reminder.

Hunger tears at their stomachs. The Jewels incinerate their hands.

Some evenings, when Varda's stars begin to glimmer in the firmament and Arien plunges down into the Western Sea, when the pain of being all alone in Arda overwhelms the deadly bite of the Silmarils, Maglor takes the stump of Maedhros's arm, as if holding his missing hand. He tries to sing, sing the Noldolantë, but the music catches in his throat.

Distantly, Maglor wonders when he began taking care of his older brother, and not the reverse.

It hardly matters now. He can do little for an elda determined to die, and he knows Maedhros is only waiting for an opportunity. If Maedhros sees the heartbreak, the utter loneliness in Maglor's eyes, he says nothing. Just stares, silent, into the embers while Maglor boils whatever roots he can find in the hard soil.

One morning, Maedhros speaks. "We need to go north." His voice is rough from disuse.

Maglor frowns. "What do you hope to find there?"

"The end."

And Maglor wants to say, 'Don't do this, brother, don't leave me to fade alone", but when he opens his mouth he finds he's too tired to speak.

 

***

 

They travel north.

The land grows barren, rocky, icy. Maglor imagines his peoples' journey across the Grinding Ice while he and his brothers sailed in their stolen ships, greeting Beleriand like conquerors, like Ainur, stained red. Burning the ships, drunk on Fëanor's words. Maedhros had been silent, then, too, the same boiling behind his eyes as he watched the flames lick hungrily at the white wood, refusing to take up a torch. Alone of all the Fëanorions blameless for Helcaraxë.

Maedhros will not die by ice or by water or by cold.

But Maglor does not ask why Maedhros had led them here. He ignites countless fires, watches his brother lose himself in each one. He sings, now, songs of the Sindar and the Green Elves, light and pure, and nothing of the Noldor. His voice is too dark, too heavy with regret to render the sweet strains of the Teleri, too deep to sing of willow branches and linden leaves, and Maglor is ashamed of his voice, even the voice that earned him the epithet "the Mighty Singer".

Maedhros sometimes joins in, halting baritone, and he seldom finishes a song, leaving cadences dangling and phrases unfinished. Maglor winces, but it's better than Maedhros's vacant silence. It seems like more and more life drains from his eyes each day, and he sees only fire flickering back from his brother's pupils.

His brother is already dead- the coda to the Noldolantë, leaning on Maglor's shoulder and staring straight ahead. Maglor clenches his fists, wonders if this is not the worst of Fëanor's deeds, follows his brother's increasingly feeble lead.

He will follow Maedhros to the Void.

 

***

 

One morning, Maglor makes out the orange glow of molten rock in the distance.

By noon, he discerns a great gash in the earth, opening to a lake of fire.

By nightfall, the brothers peer into the abyss. Maglor's hand is on Maedhros' s shoulder, though it's pointless to keep him from the edge. Smoke drifts up from the crater, thick like the mists of Hithlum.

"Nelyo...”

"Don't.... Don't, Kano." They lapse into Quenya, children in Valinor watching the embers in Fëanor's forge.

Fire, beginning and end.

Maglor blinks away tears, surprised at the hot trails running down his cheeks. "Nelyo... When you stand before Mandos... don't be proud. He has been merciful before." He doesn't say what they both think, that oathbreakers and kinslayers stand no chance of forgiveness. 

"I've no pride left to humble, little Kano." Maedhros lturns back to him, and Maglor can almost see a spark of his brother, of the love they once shared, through the haze.

"Nelyo... don't..." His voice cracks. "Don't leave me... You can't...”

"It hurts, Kano. This damned bauble of Atar's that killed us... I can't destroy it. But there's something I *can* burn." He pauses for a second, almost smiles. "Just like Atar. You won't have to bury me, either."

Maglor isn't crying, now, isn't aware of his body at all. His fëa twists like smoke inside him, and the pain is too hot for his hröa to express. Maybe he's going to burn, too.

The Silmaril blazes in Maedhros' s palm. His brother steps to the lip of the crevice, bows his head. Speaks one last time. "Eru may have mercy on me, Macalaurë, but if he doesn't... Don't you dare follow me, little brother. Don't follow me any farther." The last thing Maglor sees before he turns away is Maedhros stepping out over the edge like he's walking a broad white street in Tirion, steady, secure in the knowledge that fire can do little to a son of Fëanor but kill him.

It's the darkness after, clouded and starless as Maglor gazes sightlessly into the heavens, that holds the real pain.

He begins a hymn to Eru, a plea for mercy, but he pauses halfway, cadence unfinished and reaching out like a hand to his brother, waiting for the answer he once gave Fingon.  
It never comes.


End file.
